Apple Asks Security Experts To Examine OS X Lion

An anonymous reader writes "For as much as Mac OS X has a reputation for being safer than Windows, security researchers won't hesitate to point out that the opposite is, in fact, true. But Apple's looking to change that. This past Thursday, Apple doled out a beta of OS X Lion to developers. In conjunction with that, Apple is also reaching out to noted security experts and offering them free previews of OS X 10.7 so that they can take a look at Apple's new security measures and reach back to Apple with any thoughts and concerns they might have. Indeed, Apple is becoming a lot more security conscious these days, not only in terms of reaching out to security researchers but also in its personnel hires."

Comments

Am I reading this correctly?

[Anonymous Coward]

as much as Mac OS X has a reputation for being safer than Windows, security researchers won't hesitate to point out that the opposite is, in fact, true.

I'm sorry, what? Windows is "safer" than OS X? "In fact"?

Re:Am I reading this correctly?

[Colonel Korn]

as much as Mac OS X has a reputation for being safer than Windows, security researchers won't hesitate to point out that the opposite is, in fact, true.

I'm sorry, what? Windows is "safer" than OS X? "In fact"?

Every single year, OSX loses the Pwn2Own competition first. Windows and Linux always go down on the same day. No matter what version has been current, OSX has always been less secure than Windows when both are up to date on patches. If Apple changes its security culture, it could mean big things for Apple in corporate environments.

Re:Am I reading this correctly?

[Anonymous Coward]

If Apple changes its security culture, it could mean big things for Apple in corporate environments.

I don't think I'll live to see the day that I hear, "Nobody ever got fired for buying Apple," like I've heard for both IBM and Microsoft.

Corporations buy the OS that the applications run on. Period. Security will forever be a redheaded stepchild.

Re:Am I reading this correctly?

[polaris20]

The wording is indeed poor. Charlie Miller (made famous by Pwn2Own, hacking OS X and iOS) has stated several times that OS X is not more secure than Windows, it is safer. Safer != Secure. He goes on to say he prefers OS X, and still recommends it over Windows. Would you rather be the guy wearing a bullet proof vest running into gun fire, or the guy wearing just a T-shirt, but not even in the same county? Until OS X reaches a level of market penetration that Windows has, it'll continue to be less attractive to hackers for profit. Sorry OS X users (myself included): our OS isn't the most secure out there. Security by obscurity isn't security.

Re:Am I reading this correctly?

[Anonymous Coward]

Every single year, OSX loses the Pwn2Own competition first.

Could just be that the hackers want the mac the most ;-)

Re:Am I reading this correctly?

[node 3]

You mean, once the contest enters the phase where you can run a program remotely, people attack the Mac first, because they want to win the Mac, and Windows and Linux are successfully attacked minutes later.

Re:Am I reading this correctly?

[daver00]

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/09/security-snow-leopard/

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/hack-windows-security-snow-leopard,8704.html

Re:Am I reading this correctly?

[n0-0p]

You're joking, right? Apple is historically months behind in patching publicly disclosed vulnerabilities in core libraries they share with other Unix-like systems (Samba and Java are two key examples). Overall code robustness is abysmal in any Apple product I've assessed--they fall over with trivial fuzzing or a few hours of analysis. They're an absolute pain in the ass to deal with when trying to resolve a responsibly reported vulnerability: they often don't seem to have qualified people triaging inbound reports, and when they do finally acknowledge the correct severity of a reported issue it can take years before they finally push out a fix. And to top it all off, their core security counter-measures (e.g. ASLR and NX) are useless as anything more than marketing fluff because they're not implemented consistently.

Seriously, I've been in the security field for almost 15 years and dealt with reporting vulnerabilities to dozens of companies. Microsoft is a pain to deal with because of their compatibility matrices and long release cycles, but they're generally competent. Whereas Apple is just an absolute train-wreck. The only reason every Mac isn't infested with malware is that they're not a big enough chunk of the market for it to be worth the effort. If they ever cross the magic 15% threshold they're in for a very rude awakening.

Re:Am I reading this correctly?

[Cheech Wizard]

I've been hearing "The only reason every Mac isn't infested with malware is that they're not a big enough chunk of the market for it to be worth the effort." for so many years the effect has worn off. Year after year - You know, it really gets old hearing that excuse. If that really is the case, I hope it continues.

Re:Am I reading this correctly?

[Anubis IV]

So it may be less secure. That doesn't mean that it isn't safer. If I had an unlocked house in the middle of the countryside with no one else around, I'd be safe, but not secure. If I had an apartment in the ghetto with with bars on the windows and locks on the doors, I'd be secure, but hardly safe. Granted, the situations aren't that extreme here, but it bugs me when people conflate the two. While I don't believe that security through obscurity is solely responsible for the general lack of Mac malware, there definitely are less people making an effort at exploiting it compared to Windows.

Re:Am I reading this correctly?

[Kitkoan]

You mean, once the contest enters the phase where you can run a program remotely, people attack the Mac first, because they want to win the Mac, and Windows and Linux are successfully attacked minutes later.

No, he means exactly what he said. OSX is less secure then Windows. Charlie Miller (the guy who takes down the Macs first) has mentioned this in an interview here. While Apple has improved their security, they are still behind Windows.

Many pundits have made a lot of the fact that the Mac was the first to be exploited in the Pwn2Own contest. Was the choice of the Mac as the first target because the hardware/operating system combo was more desirable as a prize than the commodity Windows laptops of the other competitors? Or was it just because Macintosh exploits occur with much less frequency than Windows exploits and would therefore be more newsworthy?

So until this year, applications on Apple were way easier to exploit than Windows. This is because Apple had weak ASLR and no DEP while Windows had full ASLR and DEP. This year, Snow Leopard has DEP, so its no longer trivial to exploit. In fact, I have lots of bugs in Safari that I easily could have exploited on Leopard but will be very difficult on Snow Leopard. So it used to be that that it was much worse, but now its mostly comparable (although still slightly behind)

Re:Am I reading this correctly?

[ZeissIcon]

From the Charlie Miller interview mentioned elsewhere in this thread...

Another question from the Twittersphere: What OS/browser pairing to you use? Do you do anything special (beyond default settings) to secure yourself while browsing?

You're not trying to pwn me are you??? Have you ever heard the saying about the cobbler's kids not having shoes? That's me, I'm afraid. I use Safari on OSX with no special settings. This isn't the most secure combination, by any stretch of the imagination, but I like it. It's designed by Apple engineers to be easy to use and 'just work' and it does. The risk of malware is low, and hey, I'm a security expert right :) The risk of a targeted attack is real, except I don't think I'm important enough to be targeted! So I rely on security by obscurity, I guess

Re:Am I reading this correctly?

[PsychoSlashDot]

I've been hearing "The only reason every Mac isn't infested with malware is that they're not a big enough chunk of the market for it to be worth the effort." for so many years the effect has worn off. Year after year - You know, it really gets old hearing that excuse. If that really is the case, I hope it continues.

I completely sympathize. I've become tired of the same old excuses why faster-than-light travel isn't possible, just like you and the Apple malware thing. I mean, come on. Why don't they come up with new material?

10% of the personal computing market is Apple. That's it. Now, sure some of the remaining 90% aren't running Windows, but we know that since 2011 is The Year of Linux, the conversion isn't complete, so as of today the majority are.

Some excuses are repeated because they're... valid.

Re:Am I reading this correctly?

[Cronock]

I've had a Mac OS X Server machine open to the world for 2 years now, partially to just see what people would try to do. I watch the system very closely hoping I will see something happen so I can learn a little about it. Services running are SMB, AFP, Apache, Cal/CardDAV, Email for a few domains, MySQL, Software Update Server, AFP, VNC, and ARD. This server is setup as mostly default with only basic security precautions taken: Disabling clear text authentication mechanisms and using overly-strong passwords to rule out brute force attacks. The firewall has only recently been turned on, all ports open, to utilize the brute-force attempt throttling mechanism that requires it. This server hosts a few of my personal pet project domains, any information that would be considered valuable to intruders is actually kept in AES-encrypted sparse images. I'm overly paranoid about backups, so any vandalism-type attacks are quickly recovered from. So far I've only seen a good share of brute force attacks from IPs in Poland and China agaist SSH, FTP, and VNC. There have also been a whole crapload of spam registrations to the hosted WordPress site, but that's not an OS X issue.

Re:Am I reading this correctly?

[gig]

Yeah, it is fucking ridiculous.

Windows is a tire fire of botnets and viruses. There are banks who give free iPads to their high value transaction customers so their money transfers don't end up in a malware author's account.

Charlie Miller, the guy who wins the Mac every year at pwn to own, recommends users buy Macs and refuse to install FlashPlayer if they want to be as safe as possible. Just the fact that Mac OS X no longer comes with FlashPlayer and Java reduces the attack surface.

I mean, just Unix and Software Update alone are better advantages than anything Windows has. It doesn't matter that Windows 7 has some tricks the Mac doesn't have when Windows 7 runs 80% of XP malware.

I have friends who take their Windows machine in twice a year to get malware cleaned off it. How can that possibly be safer than a platform that has no viruses?

And 90% of Mac users are using the latest version and receive patches automatically from Apple within a week. More than half of Windows users are on XP. It is pathetic.

> Apple is historically months
> behind in patching publicly
> disclosed vulnerabilities
> in core libraries they share
> with other Unix-like systems

First, we're talking about fucking Windows, not other Unix.

Apple is slower in deploying a patch than other Unix because it has to work for non-technical users, but then the patch goes out to 90% of the community within a week via their automatic Software Update system, and almost the entire 100% within a month. That removes the incentive to create a commercial exploit. There just aren't going to be enough users to exploit. On Windows, most machines are not up to date on their patches. It's results that matter — % of platform patched, value of exploits lowered — not just how fast you create a patch.

> Java

Mac OS X Lion does not ship with Java, and the Java that runs on it is made by Oracle.

Are you saying you recommend Windows over Mac to a non-technical user?

Even recommending another Unix to a Mac user is ridiculous, because they are not going to know how to patch it.

Really, the nerd-blindness in your comment is disheartening. Be practical.

Re:Am I reading this correctly?

[the_humeister]

No kidding. I use Plan 9, and I have never gotten malware. Definitely it's due to its better security architecture.

Re:Am I reading this correctly?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Apple is historically months behind in patching publicly disclosed vulnerabilities in core libraries they share with other Unix-like systems (Samba and Java are two key examples).

This is interesting because as of Lion, Apple isn't maintaining a JVM. Samba isn't even running by default. That doesn't mean it isn't an issue, but it also doesn't mean OS X is particularly vulnerable as a desktop as a result. The small number of exposed services makes many of those potential vulnerabilities fairly moot. Add onto that the default sandboxing for some services and the increased use in the next version, probably has a lot more real world impact than rate up updating libraries that are not exposed on the majority of users' systems. For example, the zeroconf daemon exploits a few years ago were problematic on numerous OS's but were completely ineffective against OS X because of the MAC sanboxing.

Overall code robustness is abysmal in any Apple product I've assessed--they fall over with trivial fuzzing or a few hours of analysis.

It seems like some Apple products are really hit and miss in this regard. Some of the developers are very security conscious and some seem to give little or no thought to security at all.

They're an absolute pain in the ass to deal with when trying to resolve a responsibly reported vulnerability: they often don't seem to have qualified people triaging inbound reports, and when they do finally acknowledge the correct severity of a reported issue it can take years before they finally push out a fix.

That has not been my experience. My former company submitted a small number of vulnerabilities to Apple through the public facing bug report system, and they were reasonably responsive, replying within a week or two and doing a good job of crediting us with the fix in the next security patch.

And to top it all off, their core security counter-measures (e.g. ASLR and NX) are useless as anything more than marketing fluff because they're not implemented consistently.

Their NX is well implemented from my understanding. Did you have a specific complaint about it? ASLR is only applied to libraries, but is applied widely in Lion. The sandboxing is well implemented but not ubiquitous and is more widely applied to userspace apps in Lion (we'll see how far). The malware detection is half assed and I've heard nothing about improvements in Lion. But it sounds like most of your complaints in this regard are already on the table in Lion.

The only reason every Mac isn't infested with malware is that they're not a big enough chunk of the market for it to be worth the effort.

You are way, way, way oversimplifying. Their market share is plenty to be attractive. Not having to fight other bot operators over the Mac market share would be very profitable. There are worms now with dozens of different Windows attacks fighting over the small share of vulnerable Windows systems, adding macs to that would be a considerable increase. Also, if you work in network security you are no doubt aware of the trend towards malware that mines data such as account info and credit card and bank account info. Macs would be a goldmine in that regard. Rather, I think OS X's lack of exploitation has to do with good choices for default services, some sandboxing, lack of malware author familiarity with non-windows development, and failure to properly create multi-vector worms that contain OS X attacks in conjunction with Windows attacks. Market share alone does not explain what we see in the wild.

If they ever cross the magic 15% threshold they're in for a very rude awakening.

People said the same thing with 5% and 10%. Part of the joy of arbitrary goalposts in internet forums is the lack of accountability. They're so easy to shift over time... unless, of course, you have specific reasons and data to suggest why 15% would be the specific number we need to consider.

Re:Am I reading this correctly?

[Kitkoan]

Look Node, you can tell me what you wish and believe whatever you wish. The facts have shown the opposite of what you wish to believe here. They showed that Macs are less secure, with showing how they are less secure and you are more then welcome to try to rephrase, alter and/or change anything you wish but it won't change the facts that have been laid bare before you.

As I mentioned in my other post, if you wish to still state otherwise, please show something to back it up. Your answers to every post have been your own claims with nothing to back it up, which amounts to nothing when compared to the facts. If you wish for me to take you seriously, you'll have something to back it up that is a creditable source (no random posts of someone making random claims). I've shown Charlie Miller who has a track record of 3 years showing the weakness of the Mac OS and his experience of this as my facts, I should be able to honestly expect something along these lines from you if you are correct in your statements about the Mac OS's security. If the Mac OS is as secure as you are claiming, then you should be able to find many, MANY security-backgrounded people who will agree with you.

Re:Am I reading this correctly?

[hairyfeet]

Uhhh...you DO know none of the problems you listed apply to Windows since Vista, yes? Let us be consistent here, I mean it isn't like we are comparing Win 7 to system 7 either, so at least compare like to like.

And if Mac is so secure, why does it consistently fall first in "pwn to own"? To me pwn to own seems like the fairer test, since you A.-have an equal reason to pwn all three machines (because you get to keep it and they are nice machines) and B.-have the same bog standard software like flash that a good 90%+ of the public is likely to have.

The simple fact is ALL OSes are seriously complex pieces of code now, and with complexity comes vulnerability. The main weakness in Windows (running as admin) was removed with Vista and now with 7 you simply never run as admin (even the admin account in 7 has less rights than the old XP admin, and like *NIX and OSX is almost never needed) and with DEP, ASLR, and file and registry virtualization Windows has gotten pretty damned secure. Sadly though all the security in the world doesn't stop social engineering and working PC repair I can tell you nearly every infected PC that crosses my desk was infected by the user via social engineering tactics.

Re:Am I reading this correctly?

[John Betonschaar]

Charlie Miller is the kind of fireman who doesn't mind screaming FIRE! in a theater every now and then, just so he can make a point to stress his own relevance extinguishing fires. Every time anything is published on OS X security, this guy is quoted along with some title of some books he wrote. He might know a lot about OS X security and the way you could theoretically exploit it, but that's hardly a measure how secure OS X is compared to other operating systems.

Every time I read an article that brings up the 'small market share' that makes OS X 'less attractive to malware writers' I know I can safely disregard anything in it. People have been saying this for decades, meanwhile OS X market share has almost quadrupled, many Mac users are the kind of people with disposable income and credit cards, yet *no* viruses *whatsoever* have *ever* managed to succesfully exploit Macs. Not a *single* one. No matter how much bigger the Windows market share is, you'd expect at least one or two prolific malware writers to give it a shot, just to make a point, or to make a market out of the 10% of Macs already out there.

Both articles linked are just like that. A summary of security features OS X doesn't have, and/or a list of 'critical security flaws' and how fast they are solved, and a concluding remark that 'OS X users do not have to worry _yet_, because OS X market share is still not high enough for it to be interesting'. We'll talk yet another decade from now and see how many OS X viruses have surfaced in the mean time...

Re:Why did they wait until now?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm certain they have their own internal security experts, but if they were going to reach out to outside experts, they should have done it a lot sooner.

Mac OS X Lion was only released to developers this last Thursday. Bringing in security people to look at it earlier than that would require putting them under NDAs, which makes them effectively insiders and defeats the purpose of getting outsiders to look at it (i.e. peer review and sharing research results with other researchers).

I know that Slashdotters assert Apple as evil, but good grief, rein in the jingoism, please.

Re:The opposite???

[Shikaku]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pwn2Own

Pwn2Own contests regularly have Safari/Mac software as a valid winning target.

Is it good data? Maybe not. But the point is that Mac's aren't targeted much because the Windows desktop share is much larger (some figures say 90%). So while they can get viruses, it's not a valuable target for botnets.

Still waiting for the first Mac OS X virus in the wild...

http://www.symantec.com/security_response/threatexplorer/azlisting.jsp?azid=O

OSX.* near the bottom of the list. There's 13 on that list.

Re:The opposite???

[speedingant]

It's not bad actually... You need a MacMini server x2 to replicate each other, and push out the managed settings. You can authenticate machines via AD/OD/OpenLDAP. You can host the home folders off any NFS/AFP server. Netboot, netrestore etc makes deploying easy.. I'm looking after 150 Macs at the moment, as well as a host of PC's, and I don't have many issues. It' s just me.

Re:"that the opposite is, in fact, true"

[Gaygirlie]

Have any quotes or links to back that up, Mr. Submitter?

Why would the submitter need to provide those? It's not his claim, it's a direct quote from the article itself.

And yes, among security researchers the general consensus indeed does seem that OSX is quite poor from security standpoint and I applaud Apple on their efforts in trying to beefen it up. It's hard to point one to some direct quotes on this as it's mostly just a comment here or there, but here's atleast two links:

http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/security/security-vs-popularity/4403
http://pcworld.about.com/od/securit1/The-Truth-About-Apple-Securit.htm

Re:The opposite???

[simoncpu was here]

Work in a place with 1500+ mac's and it's hell

Work in a place with 1500+ Mac users and it's hell. There, fix that for you.

Re:The opposite???

[node 3]

No it isn't FUD, do some research online, Just about every hacking contest sees OS X go down in a ball of flames in minutes

Yes, minutes... After the contest enters the phase where you can load files remotely. And minutes later, Windows and Linux go down (everyone attacks the Mac first, because pwn2own means you get to keep the computer you pwn, and everyone wants the Mac).

Just about every patch cycle from apple sees more security vulnerabilities patches than are found in all MS products combined in a year.

Not remotely true. However it is true that in pure numbers, Apple patches more vulnerabilities than MS. These are primarily in Open Source products included with Mac OS X, and is seen as a strength, not a weakness. Also, Mac OS X patches tend to be local vulnerabilities, while Windows patches are far more often remote vulnerabilities, which are significantly more critical.

Many security researchers have been pointing out Apples Lax Security practises for a long time

Yet somehow the sky has never fallen. It's possible that Mac OS X is theoretically less secure than Windows, but it's absolutely certain that Mac OS X is, in actual real world usage, significantly more secure than Windows. Hands down, no-contest.

Pwn2own and "patches per year" are interesting metrics, but the only thing that matters is whether a user has to worry about their computer being compromised, and Mac users don't, Windows users do. It's as simple as that. Everything else is academic and hand-waving side-stepping of the actual issue.

seems they might finally be getting the message now that there share of the pie is significant enough to warrant it being an issue.

Apple has had sufficient market share since the beginning of consumer viruses and malware. There were plenty of Mac viruses back when their market share was far lower than it is now. It's absurd to claim that there are essentially zero malware for Macs because of market share, when their market share is large enough for thriving third-party software and hardware. Market share plays a role, but is not *the* primary reason.

What this indicates is that Apple is being proactive in making sure Macs remain as secure as they are today, and not resting on their laurels.

Actual Security Conversation

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

It is disappointing to see the comments thus far have not bothered to mention what potential security improvements are likely to be in the final version of Lion and how effective they might be. So far the ones I've heard mentioned include:

• ASLR applied to more than just the libraries.
• More ubiquitous use of the sandboxing framework, enough so that there are now bugs around applications being unable to save files if the file name changes in the Finder, while open in the app.
• Dropping the custom java runtime, and making a deal with Oracle to maintain it alongside the Windows JVM.
• A new full disk encryption system built in (branded the same as the old Filevault) with a rapid system wipe.
• Webkit2 with a sandboxed thread model.

I'm sure in more security oriented forums there will be some good analysis of these new features, how well implemented they are, and how effective they are likely to be. The Mac App Store offers some potential security improvements by standardizing application updates and pushing them out more quickly and widely and hopefully encouraging developers to make more use of security frameworks already present. Personally, I think the sandboxing combined with the Mac App Store could be a huge boon to security if Apple can get enough developers on board, but I'm not sure if Apple will go that route. Hopefully feedback from experts will help push them in that direction.

Metric that counts

[cratermoon]

Here's the only metric that really counts in my book.

If you've ever done desktop support for your friends and family, count up the times you've had to go in and clean up a rooted, malware-laden mess on Windows, either by running a full, time-consuming, malware scan and removal, or just doing a reformat and reinstall. Now do the same thing for your OS X user friends. Adjust for market share and compare the numbers.

Yeah, brb, going over to friend's house for free beer after I fix his Windows infection.

Re:What an honor to work for free

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

They want the benefits of open source mentality without having to give back.

Umm, most all of their security frameworks are open source. The MAC framework was based on the TrustedBSD variant of the same, and although not required by the license, Apple has continued to keep their fork open source. They are giving back the source to tons of code. They are, in fact, a huge OSS contributor. For example, Webkit2, incorporating protected memory threads into Webkit directly is open source and written by Apple. Google wrote similar software, but kept it out of Webkit so that other Webkit based browsers did not automatically gain the same security/stability benefits as Chrome. It is a serious security improvement, Apple wrote it, and contributed it, and the OSS community is incorporating it to the benefit of all.

No it won't

[Sycraft-fu]

Apple's problem in corporate environments is there complete and utter lack of understanding and support of a real enterprise. They want to play make believe at enterprise support but they don't take it seriously. It is a disaster and only getting worse. We've been looking at integrating Macs in to a lab (and we are going to) but will need 3rd party software to make it work well.

Some big noteworthy things they've done recently are discontinue servers and screw over virtualization. So you can't buy a blade server, the most popular kind of server, for Macs anymore. You can buy a Mac mini, an overpriced tiny little desktop thing ($1000 for a Core 2 Duo server box) and use that, or you can buy a Mac Pro tower. That's it. No rack servers. Ya that is real enterprise support.

In terms of virtualization VMWare fully supports OS-X server, client tools and all... However Apple won't license it to run on anything but Mac hardware. So if you want Mac VM servers you have to buy a Mac Pro tower and find a place to put that, then get VMWare Fusion on it, which is a desktop solution, not a server one, then virtualize OS-X server on that. That Big rack of high availability, bare-metal ESXi servers that you run Windows, Linux, etc on? Nope, fuck you can't run OS-X on it because Apple says so.

Apple will never get big in corporate environments until they get real with enterprise support. Not half assed solutions, real support.

market share

[Gary W. Longsine]

Roughly 10% of the total PC market is Apple. Apple has roughly 0% (zero percent) of the enterprise PC market, which is roughly half of the overall PC market (the number of installed systems is smaller than the consumer market, but consumers tend to refresh less often). So, Apple apparently has about 20% of the consumer market these days.

There are automated, automatically propagating exploits for obscure BBS systems, for IIS back when it was a tiny sliver of the web server market, for data base systems installed on a tiny fraction of web servers, in numbers utterly dwarfed by the installations of a single model of MacBook Pro.

What's it gonna take for y'all to give up on the "market share" ghost?

Mod parent

[Billly Gates]

True.

IIS and SQL Server injections were on the rise when Solaris was still king of the internet server market a decade ago. Windows Server back then was not the dominant player yet had most of the backdoors. The reason Windows has more viruses and trojans is due to activeX and shoddy design for IE and Windows. Not because it was the dominant client operating system.

I would mod you up if I had points. I have been refuting this until I am blue in the face.

It has nothing to do with popularity. Fact is in 1999 all you had to do was wrote a few lines of code in C++ to do a delete a partition and put it in an ocx container for activeX and voila! Anyone visiting your site lost their hard drive! Yes security was that bad in the 1990s with Windows.